Correspondent Dale Pierce is known
to readers of (re)Search My Trash due to varied contributions and
interviews, but is also an author with an odd cult following in America in
his own right. In recent years he has taken to not dealing with
established publishers as he has done in the past, but creating a series
of his own books on Lulu.

“I grew tired of having to kiss up to publishers and decided I
was better off doing my own thing on books-on-demand printing,” Pierce
explained. “This way also I did not have
to ‘tone down’ the
violence in my books or make them less offensive. I also have an agency
representing me in Spain (Agencia Literaria Debroag Albardone
outside Madrid) and may have some film deals with Altair
Films in Chile. So I am just making whatever off the American releases on
Lulu and aiming for foreign reprint and film sales.”

Though in incredibly low budget form, two stories from Western - The
Horror Novel have been filmed by Blue Kat Boneyard Films in Canton,
Ohio,
The Monster Within, which is finished, and Zealot, finally seeing completion
this year, came from the text before the book was released.

Western offers a central theme with several short stories
surrounding it, as with the old Hammer
horror films of the past. In the
opening moment of the text, a killer drives to the ghost town of Headstone
with the intent to bury
his wife’s body in the forsaken graveyard. As he prepares to do
so, he encounters a lone character who gives him an uninspired graveyard
tour. While debating what to do, the
killer is ushered toward the grave of a western novelist named Luther
Moorehouse and is told that if one leaves money on the grave, Moorehouse
will “yell the gift-bringer stories.”

To avoid suspicion, the killer complies and once he does, finds
himself sucked into a world where the Wild West merges with the
supernatural in an assortment of stories form beyond the grave.

In Big Chief Pain, a man enters a dark ride at a carnival in modern
times and finds himself confronted with a vengeful Indian when he is
transported into the real Wild
West.

In Ride The Man Down a vindictive gunfighter tracks a killer and
finds him hiding out as a minister in a small town church. The gunman
turned minister evidently takes verses from The Bible way too literally.

In Wrestler, a werewolf finds his niche as a carnival wrestler,
until he starts killing people in the
ring.

In Tell Them Joe Is Coming three outlaws are confronted by the
vindictive ghost of a man they killed long ago.

In The Monster Within, a divorcee buys a haunted house and finds he
has inherited three sex crazed ghosts who carry on their activities from
beyond the grave and wish him
to commit suicide so he might joint hem. This short has already seen DVD
release, though a rock bottom
production sold mainly online and at horror fests by producer Jeff Stoll.
The story varies quite a bit from the film.

Zealot, also being filmed with considerable variation from the text
by Stoll, offers a crazed killer who knocks off sinners as supposedly
being encouraged by Jesus. In
the book Pierce takes his usual offensive risks and has the killer
welcomed into heaven after death by an approving Jesus where Stoll
evidently felt the ending would piss too many people off, with the same
killer ending up in Hell.

Headstone remains one of the darkest stories of
all, which involves a man in modern times haunted by flashbacks from the
past and an incident happening outside the fictional headstone. In the
story within a story, a grim tale unfolds, with a bounty hunter bringing
young men alive to a homosexual farmer,
who offers him money to be able to sexually torture,
tape and kill said victims. The bounty hunter then retrieves the
dead bodies and take them to be claimed for a reward. Of course this
eventually comes to an end with the gay sadist, one of his victims, the
bounty man and several others all dying in a shootout that could have come
from a Leone movie.

Troubles come when predictably, this crew won’t stay dead and the
modern man latches on to their vibes.

In The Rope Museum, a man who escaped the gallows decades before
finds his payment awaiting him in a museum devoted to Wild West hangings.

Other takes abound.

Throughout the text a mysterious mad man makes constant appearances
though the is never seen. One only sees or hears of his handiwork.
Consisting of a trail of dead bodies where ever he goes.

This killer, Johnny Dragon, has an equally bizarre habit of
notching his own forehead with a straight razor whenever he kills, rather
than notching his pistol.

In the final tale before the epilogue, which returns the reader to the killer hearing these graveyard
tales, does the origin of Dragon come into being: In The Dangling Man, he
faces execution with no fear of death.

In this tale, Dragon awaits the noose and is being interviewed by
writer Luther Moorehouse, wrapping these tales and the destination of
Headstone together.

Once back to reality, our killer from the introduction finds
himself staring down at the Moorehouse grave, with the stories he was
promised completed.

There is one more tale to be told.

His own.

The son of a bitch then gets his and the book comes to a close.
That is all I will say.

Does he ever get his!

As for Johnny Dragon,
here is a captivating villain and it is again masterful how he remains
this shadowy character throughout the text, though you know it is leading
up to something when his name crops up time and time again, even without
him being physically there. In the real Wild West there was never any
Johnny Dragon, just as gunmen never really notched their pistols (who was
going to carve out the handle of a good and expensive gun?) The idea for
this madman notching his head when he makes a kill may have come from the
author’s involvement in the minor leagues of pro wrestling, where
wrestlers bleed in matches by lightly cutting their heads with a piece of
razor blade.